Identifying and Advocating Best Practices in the Criminal Justice System. A Texas-Centric Examination of Current Conditions, Reform Initiatives, and Emerging Issues with a Special Emphasis on Capital Punishment.

The second case is a prisoner appeal in a capital case, Smith v. Texas (05-11304, opinion below).
The Supreme Court had overturned LaRoyce L. Smith's death sentence in
November 2004, but the sentence was reimposed by Texas state courts.
(The earlier Supreme Court ruling, a summary decision, came in docket
04-5323, and can be found here.)
The new case appears to be the latest episode in a continuing test of
wills between the Supreme Court and Texas state courts over the
standards to be used in capital sentencing proceedings.

Four former federal judges, supporting Smith's appeal, urged the
Court to hear the case "to reaffirm that lower courts, on remand, must
comply with this Court's mandates and must not invent new procedural
obstacles to avoid compliance." This amici brief said that the Smith case involves resistance to the Supreme Court's earlier mandate. UPDATE: Thanks to Professor Erwin Chemerinsky, counsel to the judges, the amici brief can now be found here.
The Texas court, on remand, created and applied "a harmless error
analysis that had never before been applied in this case or
context....What the state court has done in this case is flout this
Court's interpretation of [constitutional] guarantees. Such an action
should not be permitted to stand, for it undermines the Constitution,
our federal system, and this Court's role in the enforcement of limits
imposed by both."

The new appeal presents two questions:

"1. Is it consistent with this Court's remand in this case for the
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to deem the error in petitioner's case
harmless based on its view that jurors were in fact able to give
adequate consideration and effect to petitioner's mitigating evidence
notwithstanding this Court's conclusion to the contrary?

"2. Can the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, based on a procedural
determination that it declined to adopt in its original decision that
this Court then summarily reversed, impose on remand a daunting
standard of harm ('egregious harm') to the constitutional violation
found by this Court?"

The Court has taken several high visibility slaps at the CCA in recent years, and this might be another in the making.

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The StandDown Texas Project

The StandDown Texas Project was organized in 2000 to advocate a moratorium on executions and a state-sponsored review of Texas' application of the death penalty.
To stand down is to go off duty temporarily, especially to review safety procedures.

Steve Hall

Project Director Steve Hall was chief of staff to the Attorney General of Texas from 1983-1991; he was an administrator of the Texas Resource Center from 1993-1995. He has worked for the U.S. Congress and several Texas legislators. Hall is a former journalist.